The rail industry has a great deal of experience in the handling materials on railcars. Particular requirements have been established for stacking materials on flat cars including dunnage, blocking and specific strapping requirements.
With bundled and elongate products such as tubing, wood beams are laid laterally across the car as dunnage to support the bundles as shown in FIG. 1. The tubes are in bundles and extend longitudinally on the railcar. Short stakes, blocking and strapping them retains the load in place. FIG. 2 illustrates one such recommended stacking.
In spite of these carefully defined methods for retaining tube bundles, the natural vibration of the railcar can result in individual tubes in the bundle slowly working longitudinally outwardly from the bundle, telescoping outward. If left unattended, the individual tubes can extend into harms way or come into contact with adjacent tube bundles or bulkheads. This can make the bundles difficult to unload and cause damage to the tubing. Naturally, bulkheads can be placed against the ends of the tubing or the tubing against barriers. However, such tight assemblies create their own problems in terms of loading, unloading and damage from motion of the tubes relative to other tubes, the bulkheads and barriers.
Currently, a wooden spacing block is used to separate one bundle of tubes on a railcar from another bundle. The spacing block is constructed of two wooden plates with wood blocks between the two wooden plates. In order to use the wood blocks the distance between the two plates is measured and the wood blocks are inserted and hammered between the two plates. In many instances a significant amount of time and effort to nail down the wooden blocks. The spacing block system is described in greater detail are spent with regards to the methods of U.S. Pat. No. 7,381,021 entitled “Method For Loading Tube Bundles on Railcars”.